Skepticism from a Godless Conservative

Privileged Much?

I never mean to disparage people with real problems; those that have come through some terrible suffering at some time in their life.

What I mainly view on the Internet (yes, Twitter) are complaints from people that wouldn’t know suffering if they passed it on the sidewalk. Oh, wait a minute, that’s exactly what they do; step around it, cross the street.

Suffering for many here in the west is not having the latest gadget or their liquor cabinet needs restocking. Wait! Can’t get a reservation at my favorite restaurant? How will I make it through the evening?

I think that the rest of the world, if they had the resources and energy to laugh at us, would. We discuss “privilege” in the west and forget that all of us, compared to a lot of people in the world, are privileged. We’re so obsessed with class, while stuffing our mouths, turning on the air conditioning or heat, finishing that craft beer, we’ve lost sight that there are a several billion people in the world that would love to be suffering as much as we are.

So next time you want to try and insult someone by referring to them as Privileged, take a look in the mirror first.

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3 thoughts on “Privileged Much?”

Everyone should make themselves aware of their own privilege. Everyone in this country and the other industrialized, western democracies has various privilege. I agree that everyone should take stock of and acknowledge their privilege. But pointing this out is hardly a reason to criticize others for pointing out privilege in other people. Granted, when someone does this and fails to acknowledge their own privilege when it is pointed out then they should be criticized for their hypocrisy. But if a person has made the effort to inventory their own privilege and acknowledge it, criticism of them for pointing out when others fail to do this is not justified. So are the individuals who prompted your post hypocrites? Do you even know if they are? If so, then criticize them for their hypocrisy. But make sure first that they are actually behaving as hypocrites.

The point of the post is that people in countries that have little or no freedom, have very little in material wealth, and not enough to eat on a regular basis, would laugh at our silly arguments over privilege.

I understand that this was the point of your post. And yes, people from deeply impoverished nations would be very perplexed by our arguments over privilege. But this does not make our arguments about privilege amongst ourselves “silly.” It does not make our internal arguments about privilege unjustified. You are making the same ridiculous argument that Richard Dawkins made in the Dear Muslima letter he wrote several years ago. The fact that those who live in third-world nations have far less privilege than do we does not support the notion that we should not talk about the issue of privilege amongst ourselves. There is no logical reason to ignore privilege blindness in this nation because privilege blindness is greater elsewhere, nor to ignore it because the privilege gap, as I shall call it, is greater between the citizens of industrialized nations vs. those of non-industrialized nations than it is between the various citizens within any of the industrialized nations. We need to talk about both. We need to do what we can to address both. We need to do what we can to make all people aware of their privilege and do what we can to ensure that the privilege gap does not become so large that it leads to political, cultural, economic or social destabilization or dysfunction. We already have enough of this here and around the world.